Fine-tuning Stephen Hawking's theory of mass

Mar 18, 2014 by Erin Weeks

(Phys.org) —If you want to know your body's mass, you hop on a scale and watch the needle swing. But if you want to know the mass of a region out in space, there's no cosmic equivalent—the best you can do is consult a geometric formula.

Three recent mathematical proofs take aim at refining one of the most useful of these formulas: Stephen Hawking's definition of a region's mass in a spacetime. A team of three mathematicians and physicists recently published their work on the pre-print website arXiv.org.

Using general relativity, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, mathematics can describe behaviors of the physical world, like the motion of the planets around the Sun and the peculiar orbit of Mercury. But determining the precise mass of an object is a hopeless task for a single formula because of the way massive objects curve spacetime itself.

"The problem of defining the mass inside a given region of a spacetime is fundamental to understanding general relativity, which is the current reigning theory of the large-scale structure of the universe," said Hubert Bray, professor of mathematics and physics at Duke University.

Lacking a universal, one-size-fits-all equation, mathematicians and theoretical physicists have crafted dozens of formulas that approximate the mass of a region. "They're all educated guesses, and none are perfect in every way," Bray said. The more accurate the mass function, he added, the more complicated the formula that expresses it.

Australian mathematician Robert Bartnik, for example, defined a formula for the mass of a region that is the "gold standard for what the correct answer really is," Bray said. "But it is also nearly impossible to compute."

The Hawking mass is another option. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking developed his theory of mass in general relativity, also known as the Hawking energy, in the 1960s. Half a century later, it remains a favored definition of mass due to its simplicity.

"The Hawking mass is a nice, simple formula," Bray said, but it too has limits. While simple to compute, it rarely has the properties scientists want. "However, we were able to show that the Hawking mass does work very well for regions bounded by special surfaces called time-flat surfaces." (Time flat refers to the surface staying in the present, as opposed to part of the surface being in the future and part being in the past.)

Bray likens outer space to a king-sized bed, with a quilt standing in for the fabric of spacetime. If you place a large object like a bowling ball on the bed, it's going to create a dimple in the quilt. Smaller objects, like golf balls, create smaller dimples. And if you roll a golf ball across the quilt, rather than taking a straight course, it will curve around the dimple of the bowling ball.

This effect—the curvature of spacetime—is what makes calculating the mass of a region in deep space so tricky.

It makes intuitive sense that a region of a spacetime with positive matter density everywhere (from stars, planets, gas and dust) should itself have positive mass, Bray said. It also seems intuitive that subsequently larger regions should have subsequently larger masses. But intuition is not enough—mathematicians must prove that a formula for the mass of a region, like the Hawking mass, actually has this property in some cases.

"And what's remarkable is that such a compact formula as the Hawking mass does have this increasing property," Bray said, "as long as the regions are bounded by time-flat surfaces."

Bray and his coauthors built on this property, writing geometric proofs showing that according to the Hawking mass, a region's mass will always increase as its size increases. The Hawking mass still isn't a perfect functional, Bray said, but it is remarkably useful for this natural class of spacetime surfaces.

The geometry used in these proofs has come a long way since the days of Greek mathematician Pythagoras, Bray said. "If Pythagoras were alive today, he wouldn't be studying triangles and squares, he'd be studying spacetimes. We have triangles and squares pretty well figured out, but many of the most interesting questions about the geometry of spacetimes are still wide open. We have a lot of work to do."

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User comments : 9

One thing that's great about Hawking is his ability to admit when he thinks he was wrong about something, which is the foundation of science, but all too often a shortcoming of individual scientists. Hawking 4eva: http://monstersof...hawking/

The mass of an object in space should be calculated as its inertia. When forces acting upon the body are accurately measured, returning the mass of the object should be no problem.

If the calculations concerning the mass of a given region of space are so problematic, then I would think that claiming that DM represents 80% of the mass of the Universe is a presumptuous statement in the extreme.

There's a star 100 light years away from us. Tell me how you plan to put a force on it and measure its mass, please.

Science is all about inference based on other connections of data that have been made. X->Y and Y->Z therefore if X then Z, even if I can't access Y.

So yes, we make measures of mass that aren't F=ma tests of the mass. Should we just give up on everything we can't measure directly? Or if we can find a consistent description of the universe that includes such inferences is that still scientific?

An important point to keep in mind is that, among other things, "science' is based only on observational analysis. A fundamental part of that is that a phenomenon exists only if it can be observed, and "observation" in "science' generally involves other objects. Mass, then, depends on the presence of other bodies. If a particle were alone in the universe, mass would have no meaning. Which invokes an accepted controversial fundamental fact of mass, the mass of mechanical interactions is also the "charge" of gravitational force. No other fundamental force depends on mass, no other "charge" figures in Newtonian mechanics. But, then, if we look at the idea of a particle alone in the universe, it wouldn't attract another particle or mechanically interact, so perhaps that is the source of mass figuring in two different areas.

"However, we were able to show that the Hawking mass does work very well for regions bounded by special surfaces called time-flat surfaces." (Time flat refers to the surface staying in the present, as opposed to part of the surface being in the future and part being in the past.)

Ummm.. wouldn't that be just a theoretical observation then since Relativity is a proven concept, along with time dilation? How can a time flat surface experience any time dilation if all is in the present? That is, what part of actual reality is the theory based on?

"However, we were able to show that the Hawking mass does work very well for regions bounded by special surfaces called time-flat surfaces." (Time flat refers to the surface staying in the present, as opposed to part of the surface being in the future and part being in the past.)

Ummm.. wouldn't that be just a theoretical observation then since Relativity is a proven concept, along with time dilation? How can a time flat surface experience any time dilation if all is in the present? That is, what part of actual reality is the theory based on?

I learned that a scale measures weight (not mass), which is mass accelerated by gravity. An object's mass is independent of a gravitational field, while its weight varies according to the local gravity.Am I mistaken?

I learned that a scale measures weight (not mass), which is mass accelerated by gravity.

Yes. It measures a force.

An object's mass is independent of a gravitational field

Yes. (OK, to a point. At extreme gravitational fields that might change, If the Higgs field is that which gives something a mass then there may be a limit of the interactions per volume per second that the Higgs field and an object can have. So one could hypothesize that at huge mass densities the relation is not strictly 1:1 ... but that would be masses far higher than needed to form black holes in any case)

while its weight varies according to the local gravity.

...or other acceleration. You can feel weight in an accelerating spaceship, even though no (or only negligible) gravitational forces are present.

The first sentence of this article almost made me not read the rest of it but i did. I mean i learned in 7th grade a scale does not tell you mass. My mass is constant here on earth and on the moon but my weight is not. That aside, a good read

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